Large companies have their hands full with terabytes and terabytes of data flowing in. But smaller, midsize companies are bracing for the data tsunami as well. A new study of more than 3,000 chief information officers (CIOs) by IBM reveals that business analytics — the ability to extract actionable insights from “Big Data” — tops priorities at midsize companies. A full 83% of midmarket CIOs, in fact, say mastering analytics is their top priority. 
CIOs of midsize companies are harnessing data warehousing (64%), visual dashboards (64%), master data management (63%), and client analytics (63%) to get on top of turning data into actionable information.
CIOs are looking to invest in technologies such as analytics and data mining that not only help them better utilize structured data, but also unstructured data in the form of videos, blogs and tweets that can be obtained through the social web.
The survey made the following observation about where this high-value data is coming from:
“Midmarket CIOs ranked product/service profitability analysis as their top priority (cited by 63%) for turning data into usable intelligence. And they cited adding new sources of revenue as the highest impact of IT on their organizations over the next three to five years. Nearly half also cited revenue model changes as a key area of focus for IT over the same period. They help generate and have access to customer preference data, supply chain patterns, emerging trends—both within their organizations and from competitors—Internet behavior and response patterns, and so much more.”
(Chart Credit: Wikimedia Commons.)
(Cross-posted from SmartPlanet Business Brains.)
